Published Paper Details:

This paper studies the representation of Dalit women in audiovisual media especially on television with the analytical approach of Dalit feminism in India. It is based on 500 individual interviews of Dalit educated middle class women, from Nagpur city, 15 core-group interviews and content analysis of secondary data. It is found that the Dalit woman is missing in news, advertisement as well as in daily soap operas and reality shows in Marathi and Hindi channels. Dominant media through its brahminical, high caste & class lances misrepresent and misinterpret her culture. She depicted as dirty, untidy, physically weak, rape victim, highly superstitious, immoral and easily available prey for sex, saleable or criminal. Mainly she showed in the role of house maiden, Zaduwali or labor. Media ignored her �day to day� struggle for livelihood, for physical security, struggle for basic needs, and her participation in political movement as she is the part of all Dalit movements including Naxalite movement. She successfully struggled for gender rights within and outside her community as well as she strongly participated in labor movement in non-organized sectors and political arena as labor. But, this struggling image never becomes the part of any news, soap-operas or documentary on Medias. Dalit women enjoyed more freedom than other women as Dalit society has comparatively weak patriarchy where women worked inside and outside the home throughout the age, she has all social right and enjoyed family head-ship and because of that she has misinterpreted by dominant media after evaluated by the scale of brahmanical values. On these issues, Dalit women refuted media as the part of their life and accepted it as mere means of entertainment that represented �others�. They are not adopting media as motivational factor, inspirational instrument or the art of depiction of agony of their life, but they found alienated and alien to them.